Marketing in Malta

Most companies that want to retain a client base are interested in lead generation, the upcoming Trade Fair in Malta is geared towards this very thing. Companies setup fancy stands with demos, and pretty girls handing out information, leaving the visitor walking away with an array of material to browse through at leisure. Personally, this year I will be looking at investing in alternative energy and I’ve got my eye on some large panels to capture those hot Maltese sun rays.

My typical approach will be as follows:

• Attend the fair, totally clueless on what I want other then the end solution, that’s saving money
• Browse the stalls and talk to everyone about my needs, maybe rant on about the 90% surcharge
• Collect lots of information, avoid the sales reps at this stage that try to push products onto me without asking my requirements.
• Go home and research it online, getting a better understanding on what’s on offer and the level of support I can expect.
• Select a few companies and see who is most willing to offer me a service

Please note, at this stage cost is not a factor due to the fact that I would much rather invest in a good quality product that gives me a better long term investment.

I’m a good customer to have, no fixed budget and looking to make a long term commitment.

My main concern now is investing in a company that shares my vision in offering a long term commitment.

I’m now browsing websites in order to buy or request information online. I find YOUR website, it offers me the following options:

• Contact forms
• Newsletter sign ups
• Registration to download products and information (include product info and e-books)
• Referrals to partner sites
• Landing pages on social networking websites

I spend some time looking through your offerings, join your newsletter sign up and register for more information. You have created a lead, but then I’m done with you I move onto a few of your competitor’s sites and do the same, how now do you impress me to and convert me to a sale?

When you’re constructing lead-generation sites you need to take into account a number of important metrics that can help you understand the behaviours that drive success.

Overall Conversion: This is a calculation that divides leads by site visits. No matter what changes you make to your site, you should always pay close attention to this metric.

Conversion by campaigns: This metric tracks how visitors from different campaigns or visitor segments convert to leads. By comparing them, an analyst can fine-tune messages for different audience segments. This is vital to delivering targeting information especially in newsletter campaigns.

Drivers to the registration process including step-by step: This metric examines the effectiveness of content in driving visitors to the registration process, where they will (you hope) register and become customers. Good analytics programmes will allow you to track at what stage the user drops out of the process. This metric is especially important for the longer registration process and works and in hand in hand with the next one.

Analysis of registration-process dropouts: When people drop out of the registration process, you should find out where they go next. That will tell you what other information people are looking for in the registration process. By presenting that information in context, you can optimize the process.

Conversion of leads to actual customers: In addition to knowing what types of lead-generation option drive that most visitors to register on your site, you should also understand if and how visitors ultimately convert into customers.

Examine and refine your users drop rate and you will see this flourish.